Small Victories
by Ada15
Summary: Oneshot. Harry watches Dean sleep. Dean/Harry.


This is a oneshot, a snapshot of a Harry Potter/Dean Winchester story idea I had. It takes place after the season five finale of Supernatural and it is an established relationship.

I don't own Harry Potter or Supernatural.

Not for the first time in his life, Harry Potter was floundering…he had no idea what to do. Harry had never been great at relationships, or at least he hadn't thought he was. The only other long term one he'd had had ended badly and this one…

He was sitting in the chair near the occupied motel bed, watching the man sleep. Dean was not sleeping peacefully and Harry had been debating with himself about whether or not he should wake Dean up for nearly an hour.

On the one hand, Dean hadn't slept in days and he had been near the point of passing out when he'd finally collapsed on the motel bed and let sleep drag him under. Also, Harry knew that Dean rarely found sleep without nightmares. But he hated it, hated watching the silent battle because Dean was usually silent about it. Harry had slept in the same room with the man on too many occasions not to notice this.

Harry had his own nightmares but he couldn't imagine how Dean was still sane. Never mind what had happened to his parents, or even watching Sam die or the thousand other things he had faced down since he was only four years old. Harry had to wonder how anyone could come out of Hell and not be either mad or catatonic.

He wondered how much a person could take before they snapped completely. How much would it take?

He'd wondered about that before, of course. He'd wondered about it when Cedric had died, when one stupid decision had ended the life of an intelligent, kind, boy full of potential. He'd wondered about it when Sirius had been freed from twelve years of unjust and cruel imprisonment only to die a year later. He'd wondered about it a lot after the war, after the death toll at the battle at Hogwarts.

But he'd never wondered about it more than he had after meeting the Winchesters.

There was a difference between living and simply surviving. Dean had survived so far. He'd survived his parent's deaths, he'd survived Hell, he'd survived watching Sam jump. But there _was _a difference and Harry was terrified that that was all Dean would do.

He understood it. He'd understood the concept even at seventeen. He'd lived through all the deaths he had seen during the war but if something had happened to either Ron or Hermione, he might have taken that final train ride after all.

He understood very well that Dean was damaged…how could he not be? Being with Dean meant he had to understand that. Some people wouldn't, he knew also. It was one of the reasons his engagement to Ginny had ended the way it had. Her brother had died in the final battle and she'd almost died herself but Ginny had always been a bit better adjusted that he had been. She had family-one that had always loved her.

It had taken years for Harry to get to a place where he was somewhat alright. He had come out the other side of the war with a truckload of guilt, angst, nightmares, and general depression. She hadn't been able to handle it.

No matter how mature for her age she might have been she was still a kid-a teenager-when they'd started back up their relationship afterwards. Harry had picked up a pretty strong case of post traumatic stress that she was ill equipped to deal with. He'd thrown himself into auror training and had become almost as jumpy as Mad Eye Moody himself.

He'd almost driven himself crazy until Hermione had convinced him to take a break from it all, to go off. And he had and it had helped. He'd been to several other countries but it hadn't been until he'd stopped off in the states that he'd finally found something worth it all, that he'd finally found something that really and truly helped.

And here he was now, twenty nine years old, sitting in a cheap motel room, watching a man who was a in a worse way than he had ever been sleep. And he had no idea what to do to make it better, had no idea if there was anything that could ever make it better.

But he would try…he'd always try. Finally making a decision, he got up from his seat and settled down on the bed beside Dean. When he wrapped his arms around the man and Dean pulled him close instead of pushing him away, he counted it as a victory.


End file.
